


Andraste's Eyes

by greyvvardenfell



Series: The Gold to My Silver [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Body Dysphoria, F/M, Flirting, Nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27482320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyvvardenfell/pseuds/greyvvardenfell
Summary: Stripping down to make it through Andraste's flames isn't something Reydis would've done at the best of times... and especially not in front of handsome Zevran.
Relationships: Zevran Arainai/Brosca, Zevran Arainai/Warden
Series: The Gold to My Silver [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764202
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Old fic from Fictober 2017

“So, uh…” Reydis trailed off, rubbing anxiously at the back of her neck as her ruddy cheeks flushed even darker. “I don’t, um. I don’t really know how to say this, but I’m pretty sure this, uh, altar inscription thing is saying that we… we have to take off, well, everything, to get through the fire.” She swallowed and turned to the only companion she could bear to make eye contact with after suggesting such a thing. “Wynne? Is that what you get out of this?”

The mage stepped forward and peered down at the faded carvings. “Yes.” Reydis’s stomach curled in on itself. Her own word was one thing, but to have Wynne’s agreement made it all too real. “I believe you’re right.”

“E-everything?” Alistair stammered. He shook his head slowly in disbelief as he looked over Wynne’s shoulder. “Just— just strip down for Andraste? That seems… odd. Definitely odd.”

Zevran’s hearty laugh made Reydis’s stomach drop even further. “Sounds like a party to me, my friend,” he said, clapping Alistair on the shoulder before directing his nimble fingers to the buckle of his weapons belt. The heavy leather slapped to the stone floor remarkably quickly. Reydis averted her eyes from him as he happily set to work on his armor.

“I suppose there’s nothing for it, is there?” Alistair let out a weary sigh. “This is not what I expected to be doing today, I can tell you that.”

“But you always hope for it, no?” Even without looking, Reydis knew Zevran had winked.

“That’s your territory, not mine.”

“Territory is meant to be shared, Warden Alistair. Or are you more the lone wolf sort? Or lone mabari, as it were…”

Reydis let their conversation fade into the roar of blood in her ears as she slowly removed her greatsword and sheath from her back and set them on the floor at her feet, crouching to remove her boots. She risked a glance at Wynne, whose staff and pack had been set beside a growing pile of neatly folded robes as she removed each one in turn. Reydis bit her lip. No one had seen her naked since she was a child. Even in camp, where privacy was hard to find, she would rather bathe alone in the dead of night than risk Leliana or Morrigan sharing a stream with her. They were tall and lean and smooth-skinned and beautiful. Reydis wasn’t. She wasn’t any of those things and she never had been.

For a moment, she considered fleeing the temple. Alistair, Wynne, and Zevran were more than capable of retrieving the Ashes themselves. Surely the invisible path across the chasm would hold, and the other doors they’d opened would welcome her through, and she could explain to the Guardian what had happened and— Reydis stopped herself. _This is the last test. It’s like fighting yourself again, right?_ She peeked over her pauldron at her companions, checking their progress, before snapping her attention to her other boot. Somehow, Zevran was already naked, though he was still speaking to Alistair, who had only removed his boots and gloves. _Well, okay. It’s like fighting yourself again for some of us, anyway._

Even the short look at Zevran she’d gotten lit up Reydis’s cheeks once more. With his back to her, his impressive tattoos were on full display, bold swirling curves that followed the lines of his lean muscles over his shoulders and ribs and spine, down onto his hips and the backs of his legs and curling around onto his thighs and upper arms. They flickered in the shadows cast by the divine flames around them, dancing like living things. _They suit him_ , Reydis thought absently. Then the thought hit her harder, taking root in her chest. _Really, really well._

_Oh, Ancestors, I can’t do this. Not in front of him._

Reydis’s flight reflex tingled through her calves, urging her to run. _Can’t I literally fight myself again? Please?_ She inhaled deeply, trying to calm her racing heart. _Anything but this. I’m not ready for this. Why does anyone pray to you, Andraste? This isn’t worship, it’s torture!_

Somehow, her hands moved without her consent and stripped off her gauntlets and vambraces, then unhooked her left pauldron and set it down beside the other pieces of armor. As she turned to remove her other pauldron, the hair on the back of her neck began to prickle. Reydis forced her fear back down her throat and shook her head. _It’s your imagination. Everything’s fine. You worry too much._

The sudden presence at her back changed her mind. Reydis stiffened, hands automatically curling into fists, and swiveled around with her pauldron raised like a shield. She had a moment of clarity, enough to wish that she, or he, had been any other height, before embarrassment swept her into its gale and she squeezed her eyes shut, blocking her view of the appendage Zevran had (she would give him the benefit of the doubt and assume accidentally) presented to her.

“Do you require assistance, my dear Warden?” he asked, a grin lurking at the corners of his mouth.

Reydis kept her eyes down. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“Oh? I cannot, for instance, remove your backplate for you? Surely it would be difficult to reach this—” Zevran reached out and flicked a fastening at the back of her neck. “—by yourself, no?”

Carefully, she rose to her feet and met his bright golden gaze, face still ablaze. His offer seemed innocent, as far as she could tell, despite the gleam in his eyes, but suspicion was starting to break through her mortification. “Why?”

He shrugged. “You seem uncomfortable here. I do not blame you, certainly, and as I find myself somewhat ahead of schedule, why not offer what help I can so that we may leave this place that much more quickly?”

Reydis couldn’t deny his logic, nor the conclusion he’d come to that she wasn’t in her element inside the temple. _But couldn’t Wynne help me instead?_ She looked over Zevran’s bare brown shoulder. Wynne was preoccupied helping Alistair who had gotten his arms stuck over his head trying to remove his splintmail. _I guess both of them are out._ She felt her heartbeat tick the seconds away as his suggestion grew cold, his eyes never leaving her.

 _Oh, Ancestors, please, please, please don’t let me regret this._ “Yeah, okay. I guess it would be faster.”

Zevran smiled brightly and slid behind her to toggle the other fastening. He lifted the backplate from her shoulders, revealing the padded leather harness she wore to relieve the weight of it and the sweat-soaked shirt beneath. “Marvelous armor, this. But do you know the problem with it?” he asked.

“What?” Reydis asked apprehensively, catching her breastplate as it fell into her hands.

“It is rather hard for one person to remove.”

“I can get out of my armor alone,” she said, feeling defensive now that she’d accepted his help. “It just takes awhile.”

“Awhile in which you are half-exposed and inattentive. The perfect time for an assassin to strike.”

Reydis snorted. “Half-exposed?”

“Ah, I am a bit hypocritical at the moment, it’s true.”

“That’s not what I—” Her blush returned in full bloom, spreading across her face. She’d already almost forgotten his nakedness, his small talk putting her at ease. “That’s not what I meant.”

Zevran laughed as he crouched to place her backplate on the floor. Rather than join him, Reydis let the breastplate fall from her hands. It clattered loudly against the flagstones, but she kept herself ramrod straight.

“You are very well-protected,” he commented as he stood. “That metal is strong.”

“Yeah, well, someone needs to withstand the heavy hits.”

“Mm.” Zevran’s quiet response lingered in the air around them. Reydis inhaled sharply as his fingers found their way to a buckle on her harness. His hands radiated heat palpable even through the warmth of Andraste’s flames barring their path forward. He undid one strap, then another, in silence. With his chest pressed so close to her back, Reydis found herself breathing in his rhythm. She hoped he couldn’t feel how fast her heart was beating.

“This is not how I planned to first see you naked, you know.”

All of the air in Reydis’s lungs escaped in one gasp. She lurched away from him and turned around, mouth agape. “Excuse me?”

He winked at her. “I like a little more romance.”

A thousand thoughts scrambled at the edges of her mind, and she found herself unable to grab hold of any of them. After an infinite moment, she found scant purchase on a fact, safer to catch than the distress and shame and fear sharpening the rest. “Don’t you usually kill the people you see naked?”

“A-ha, but you have already foiled that plan, my dear." Zevran chuckled, pulling her back to him with strong but gentle force, and set to work on another buckle.

“You’re going about it a little backwards, then, aren’t you? Killing first and stripping later?” The words spilled from Reydis’s lips without her forming them, her consciousness careening away down tunnels of thought she couldn’t track. Part of her wondered how she could be having this conversation with Zevran, of all people.

He shifted his hand and grazed his fingertips along Reydis’s shoulder blade. She flinched involuntarily at his touch. He laughed again, low and sultry, and leaned close to her ear. “Nervous, Warden?”

 _Yes_. “No, I’m just not really in the habit of letting random assassins undress me.” _  
_

“Is that so?” He finished undoing the last buckle and slid his hands under the padded straps to lift the harness from her shoulders, lingering with his palms pressed against the dampness of her shirt. Reydis felt her muscles contract and knew Zevran could feel it too, as his thumbs began to rub small, soothing circles in an attempt to relax her. “But I am not so random, am I? We have been traveling together for many months now.”

Slowly, his ministrations worked out some of her stress. “That’s true. I guess.”

“You guess? Hmm…” Zevran peeled his hands away, taking the harness with him. He knelt to place it with the rest of her armor and stayed on his knees, skating his fingers down her legs. After a moment, Reydis's mind crashed heavily back into her head, returning with the image of him caressing her, touching her in places she barely touched herself...

She coughed, blazing scarlet again. “I can, uh, finish this myself. Um.”

Zevran got to his feet without complaint. “As you wish, my dear,” he said evenly, maintaining eye contact with her.

Reydis broke their shared gaze first. “Thank you. For your help.”

“It was my pleasure, Warden.” He inclined his head and took a step back, dragging a strand of tension with him. Reydis watched him go, a strange tightness in her belly. The places on her back where his hands had rested tingled, half-hot, half-cold. She almost opened her mouth to say something, perhaps to call him back, to apologize, when Wynne finally pulled Alistair's shirt free and sent him sprawling comically across the floor. Zevran snapped his attention away, distracted by the noise and movement, and the connection between them dissipated like smoke.


	2. Chapter 2

Reydis kicked at a stone in her path, scowling at it as it skittered away into the weeds on the side of the road. Redcliffe was still a day’s walk away, and despite the fine spring weather, she longed for a bed, a bath, and some time away from the constant chatter of her traveling companions. The fight through Haven and the climb up Mount Daverus had taken so much of her energy that even the voices she liked were becoming irritating. Eyes still narrowed, she shot a foul look over her shoulder at Leliana and Zevran, talking animatedly with each other as they kept pace with Bodahn’s wagon.

“That’s a very personal question,” Leliana huffed, folding her arms across her chest as she walked.

Zevran raised an eyebrow. “I mean no offense,” he said carefully, a smirk dancing behind his lips. “I simply offer my services should you ever feel the need for… release.”

Reydis blushed and turned around again, focusing hard on the road under her feet. Of course he was flirting. Did he ever do anything else?

Yes. He did. She knew it, but... but Zevran had seemed to change his tone when speaking to Reydis herself, especially after their encounter facing the divine flames in the Temple of Sacred Ashes, where his quick hands had helped divest Reydis of her heavy plate armor much faster than she’d anticipated, which in turn fed the secret fire inside her that she tried her best to ignore, the one that had been kindled by the moment she’d interrupted in the Fade months before. Although, Reydis reminded herself, she was probably imagining it, like she’d imagined so many things before. No one wanted the fat, angry dwarf, after all.

“You’re kind to think of my well-being, Zevran.” Leliana’s voice came floating over her shoulder. Reydis did her best to swallow her frustration.

“Let it never be said that I am not available when the call for help goes out. Though I find myself curious, how long were you in that cloister?”

Reydis could almost hear Leliana roll her eyes. “Just over two years. Why do you ask?”

Stunned silence met her words as Zevran scrambled for a response. “And— and all the brothers and sisters there, they had taken vows?”

“Most of them, yes.”

“For two years you had no contact with anyone but men and women who were promised to some uncaring god?” Zevran couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around the concept. Reydis found she couldn’t blame him even as she berated herself for listening in.

Leliana’s tone hardened. “What are you getting at?”

“Didn’t you—” he paused, searching for words. “Didn’t you desire companionship in those two years? Two years! The very thought makes me weak.”

Reydis scoffed aloud, regretting the sound the moment it left her mouth. The last thing she wanted was to draw their attention to her eavesdropping. “You should try twenty-four years,” she muttered under her breath, barely voicing the words. “Forgive me if I don’t feel bad for you.”

The rest of the conversation faded into a quiet buzz as Reydis turned inward, lost in thought and self-loathing. The sun reached its zenith and began to descend before Alistair jogged up to her, startling her from her daydreams, and suggested calling for a rest. Reydis nodded her agreement and made her way off the road into the shade of an oak tree, eager for quiet. She dug through her satchel for the packet of dried berries she’d prepared before leaving Haven and settled down against the bark to enjoy them. As she tipped her head back to stare up through the branches, still bare from winter but starting to bud, some of the tension that had built up between her shoulder blades start to ease.

“May I join you?” He asked so softly, she thought she was hearing things until he said more. “You seem to have found a most comfortable place to rest.”

“Zevran?” Reydis peered through the bushes surrounding her hiding spot, unable to see him.

He emerged opposite of where she’d been looking, a smile creasing the corners of his bright golden eyes. “I hate to disturb you, but I find I could use some quiet.”

“Really?” The incredulous question was out before she could snap it off.

Luckily, he laughed. “Is that so wrong of me?”

“Sorry.” Reydis felt heat rise to her cheeks as she shifted to make room for him against the tree. “You just… don’t seem like the type.”

“Everyone enjoys a moment or two alone,” he said, folding himself down gracefully next to her. “Or nearly so.”

“Yeah, you’re not really alone, are you?”

Zevran rested his elbows on his knees and leaned back against the oak. Reydis could hear his back pop as his bones resisted the new pressure. He let out a sigh, half-pleasure, half-preparation. “In truth, I wanted to speak to you.”

She narrowed her eyes, immediately suspicious. “About what?”

“About what you said earlier. I imagine I was not supposed to hear it, but, well… elf ears are keener than most.” He had the audacity to wink at her.

Reydis felt blood drain from the rest of her to pool in her cheeks, coloring them a brilliant crimson. _Ancestors preserve me. Ancestors fucking preserve me._ “No, you most definitely shouldn’t have heard that.”

“Have you truly never…?”

“Does that really surprise you?” _Just look at me._ She fought every urge to bury her face in her hands, or perhaps her entire body in the detritus of the past autumn’s leaves that still littered the ground.

Zevran eyed her closely, depths of meaning in his gaze, but didn’t respond to her question beyond asking another. "Is it your desire to remain chaste?”

 _I’ve never wanted anything from you before, Ancestors. Andraste? Are you listening instead?_ Reydis’s mind flattened like a fallen tent. She could easily lie, follow the same persona she’d established in Orzammar: the sexless mass of muscle with silence in place of a heart. _But that Reydis died in the Joining, didn’t she? I don’t have to be her anymore._ “No, it’s… mostly been a matter of circumstance and a lack of, uh—” If possible, she flushed even darker. “—partner.”

“I understand,” he said, as though they’d been discussing dinner arrangements. “I can see that this line of questioning upsets you, so I’ll not press you further.”

“I, um. No, yeah, no. I guess I—”

He cut her off with another smile, gentle and tender and unlike anything she’d seen on his handsome face before. “I have no wish to make you uncomfortable, my dear Warden. That I can promise you.”

Reydis found the strength to meet his gaze for the first time since he sat down. “Um,” she repeated. “It's just, um. I’ve just never really, y’know. No one's ever asked, or assumed or... I've never talked about it before. With anyone, especially not—”

Zevran’s raised eyebrow asked his question for him. Reydis’s flaring blush, spreading to her ears and down her neck, and the way she quickly averted her eyes to the forgotten snack she’d fetched from her pack, answered it.

“Want a blueberry?” she asked abruptly, hands fumbling with the paper wrapping around the dried fruits as she scrambled to tear it off.

“Certainly, if you are willing to share.” He kept his amusement safe behind his eyes. She looked so cute when she blushed.

“I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to.”

 _My sentiments exactly_ , Zevran thought, reaching out to pluck the berry from the palm of Reydis’s pale hand, deliberately lingering a moment too long with his fingertips against her skin.

_All in good time._


End file.
